Regional Surveys from Philly, NY, Texas and Chicago are all at levels previously indicative of a recession. The lone false signal was the Texas General Business Activity Index in January 2016...the weakness was regionally isolated as the price of oil went from over $100/bbl in 2014 to around $30/bbl by early 2016. No region has absolutely fallen off a cliff, [...]
Factory Orders continues to slow after pandemic surge. Questions to ask: Is the slowing just reversion after a pandemic surge because of supply chain disruptions, onshoring, low interest rate, stimulus? Thus, will this be the soft landing everyone is hoping for? Does it matter as slowing activity is slowing activity and activity continues to slow? No one knows the answer [...]
Every time we hear, watch, or read the news, we are reminded that liberty is a rare commodity in this world. - Ronald Reagan It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God such men lived. - George S. Patton In the End, we will remember not the words of our [...]
Housing starts and permits for April are running at a level of right around 1.4M units down from around 1.8M last year. That's a drop of 22% in starts and 21% in permits. 1.4M units is roughly in line with the long term average. The level of starts and permits is not yet concerning, but the slow down continues to [...]
What is long term? That's a question with many answers depending on your point of view. Some people might think a year is long term. I had a client tell me once that he was so old he didn't buy green bananas because he might not be around to eat them. Some might say 3 years is long term but [...]
Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful. -Warren Buffett Buy when there's blood in the streets, even if the blood is your own. -Nathan Rothschild Rothschild is said to have made a fortune buying assets in the wake of the Battle of Waterloo so in his case, he meant this literally. Another quote attributed [...]
Bring out your dead! CUSTOMER: Here's one. CART MASTER: Nine pence. DEAD PERSON: I'm not dead! CART MASTER: What? CUSTOMER: Nothing. Here's your nine pence. DEAD PERSON: I'm not dead! CART MASTER: 'Ere. He says he's not dead! CUSTOMER: Yes, he is. DEAD PERSON: I'm not! CART MASTER: He isn't? CUSTOMER: Well, he will be soon. He's very ill. DEAD PERSON: I'm getting better! CUSTOMER: No, you're not. You'll be stone dead in [...]
What is the state of the US economy? When will this long-anticipated recession finally arrive? And when it does, what does it mean for investors? Those are the questions everyone is asking and the answers are, well, hard. Despite years - decades, centuries? - of research, there is no accurate way I know of to predict the timing or depth [...]
I sit down every week to write these updates and sometimes it is a struggle to find something - anything - worth writing about. Sure, there's always market "news" so I can find something to fill the page and I hope you find it interesting but the fact is that I don't think any investor - as opposed to trader [...]
One of the toughest things about navigating this bear market and the widely anticipated coming recession is that we've had to differentiate between real and nominal economic and market variables like nothing in recent decades. There are very few market commentators today who have navigated an inflationary environment like the current one. I haven't either, of course, which is why [...]
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